Section: Jewish Telegraphic Agency (USA)

RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — A new opera based on an 86-year-old Yiddish poem about a Taino indigenous chief who resisted the Spanish invaders will have its premiere in Havana next month. “Hatuey: Memory of Fire,” will first be performed in Havana on March 3, reported the New York Times. Composed by Frank London of the Klezmatics, the opera, “Hatuey:...

A scene from “Austerlitz,” a documentary that chronicles the tourist experience at two former concentration camps. (Courtesy of Austerlitz/Loznitsa) NEW YORK (JTA) — How do people behave when they visit a concentration camp or a Holocaust memorial? Do they act as if there are in place of reverence or mourning? Or do they behave as crowds do at...

Georges Bensoussan, right, at a talk with Mino Chamla in Milan, Italy, Sept. 16 2014. (Moked/Federico Valente) (JTA) — The hate speech trial of a prominent French historian charged with calling Arabs innately anti-Semitic is dividing French Jews and sowing dissent within the local equivalent of the Anti-Defamation League. It is all happening over...

Rabbis Ari Edelkopf, with black beard, and Berel Lazar, right, listen to a speech at a reception of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia in Sochi, Russia, Feb. 9, 2017. (Courtesy of Federation of Jewish Communities) (JTA) — Three years ago, Rabbi Ari Edelkopf and his wife, Chana, worked around the clock for weeks to show off their...

Syrian women attending a lesson at the Women’s Support Center in Islahiye, Turkey, Nov. 25, 2016. (Tanya Freedman/World Jewish Relief) ISTANBUL (JTA) — In a region awash with half a million Syrian refugees and the predators they attract, home used to be the only safe space for Samiyeh Hilo and her infant son, Mohammed. A teacher of English...

LONDON (JTA) — Hundreds of Russian-speaking Jews from across Western Europe convened in the British capital for a conference on learning whose organizers at the Limmud FSU group said was the largest of its kind. The weekend event — the first entry into Western Europe by the Limmud FSU group for Russian-speaking Jews in the former Soviet Union and...

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) – A list of the names of Nazi SS commanders and guards who served at the Auschwitz concentration camp was published online. The list, believed to be the most complete ever, went online Monday at the website http://en.truthaboutcamps.eu/. The list was prepared by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance in cooperation with...

Demonstrators at JFK airport in New York protesting Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigrants from certain countries, Jan. 28, 2017. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images) (JTA) — A year after they submitted their application for asylum in the United States, Shahi and his mother expected to be let in. As Iranian Jews who applied for...

(JTA) — The U.S. temporary ban on issuing entry visas citizens of seven predominantly-Muslim countries has affected several Jewish families, according to HIAS, a global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees. The 90-day ban, which came Friday in an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, has plunged into further uncertainty the lives...

Journalists visiting a renovated barrack at Auschwitz, Dec. 1, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz) OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — I did a shameful thing on my first visit 20 years ago to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In a guestbook outside an Auschwitz museum exhibit featuring information on 70,000 Polish non-Jews who were murdered here, I...